Saturday, September 7, 2013

Oops, I forgot to post last weekend. I finished the one block wonder kaleidoscope quilt top. I might quilt it tomorrow, I'm not sure. I need to do more with triangles- they are so hard. This actually turned out fairly well, but there are a few areas that are puckery. Lack of pre-washing really should take care of it though.

For Halloween, I embroidered shirts for all the nieces and nephews.

Initial shirts for the young-uns.

And a super awesome design for the grade schoolers. (This may be my favorite design ever; it turned out really nicely.)

Because embroidery supplies are so freaking expensive, I only have one hoop. It is very difficult to hoop t-shirts in it (though I've done it before, with sticky backing and lots of pins) and these shirts already had a really long involved stitch-out, with lots of taking the hoop off the machine to put in new fabric; so I decided to take a short cut. Each of the designs is embroidered on black fabric, and then the fabric is put onto the t-shirt like a patch. I really don't think you can tell from a few feet back. I also don't really expect season kids shirts to get too much actual use.The other issue with them is the little kids shirts have pockets. I debated removing them, but worried it would leave thread snags in the t-shirts, so I just left them, half under the design. It was nearly IMPOSSIBLE to find black short sleeve t-shirts in September. I wanted t-shirts because Texas is usually warm until Halloween, and gets a cold snap that night, just in time to ruin your costume. I found some specialty websites, but shipping cost like $15, so I ended up with these Old Navy shirts- the little kids cost $2.06 each, the big kids $6 each.

I really hope the kids like them! (Also, if you are into machine applique embroidery, I highly recommend PlanetApplique.com I'm not affiliated, didn't get compensated to say this, but these are their designs, and I just LOVE them.)